With fundraising deadline looming, candidates ask for cash
For those of you following the 2012 money race, tomorrow is an important day: It marks the end of the third quarter of this year's fundraising cycle.
In a last-ditch effort to boost their numbers, candidates across the state are flooding voter e-mail inboxes with last minute appeals for donations. The politicos aren't asking for much - Tarryl Clark wants as little as $3 to meet her goal of $10,000 - but the payoff can be substantial if enough voters contribute.
Here's a sampling of the missives we've collected this morning.
To mark the occassion, Tarryl Clark, who's looking to challenge 8th District Republican Rep. Chip Cravaack, has released a new two-minute video highlighting her Minnesota roots and her record. Watch it here.
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It makes sense that Clark is focusing on her Minnesotan heritage because she's a relative unknown in the 8th; she moved there earlier this year after running unsuccessfully against Rep. Michele Bachmann in the 6th last year.
Rep. Keith Ellison is sending out at least two versions of a fundraising e-mail.
The first frames donations as one of the annoying necessities of the election cycle.
It's that time of the year where campaigns send out emails filled with words like "donate" and "contribute," with suggestions to give $10, $25, or more.
As we all know, Keith would rather talk about how we can get Americans back to work, but in order to do so, we need resources to amplify his voice and put jobs at the forefront of the debate.
The second makes a veiled attack on Lynne Torgerson, a challenger to Ellison who calls him a "radical Islamist" on her website.
In announcing their candidacy, a familiar opponent attacked me as a "radical Islamist." These divisive attacks did not work in the past, and with your help, they won't work again.
To make his case for cash, Rep. Erik Paulsen criticizes the Obama administration's links to Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer that got loans resulting from the 2009 stimulus bill before going bankrupt. Now, Obama wants to pass another jobs bill, which Paulsen opposes.
Taxpayers are getting fleeced by so-called "stimulus" projects that are doomed to fail, yet Washington Democrats are as eager as ever for more of these projects... Now [Obama] wants Congress to pass his "Son of Stimulus" bill.
For her part, Bachmann's been pressing voters to donate to her presidential campaign. One of her latest e-mails came from her husband, Marcus, who wrote:
My wife continues to amaze me each day as she stands up to her critics to defend our values. But I know she cannot stand alone. She needs to know you stand with her. Please follow this link to generously give any amount you can afford up to the legal limit to show Michele you support her.
That "legal limit" Bachmann mentions is $2,500 per person or $5,000 per couple.